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Costa Rica and its Future with Today's Politicians

Roy Rojas · 20:07

Este artículo también está disponible en español

Translation by David Sasaki

In the last few years, politics in Costa Rica have changed radically compared to what was known 10 years ago. What used to be the race to become President in the past decade is now much different.

The traditional political parties, Liberación Nacional (PLN) and Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC) are damaged and have gone from complete bipartisan control to, today, disputing their power with less traditional parties like Movimiento Libertario (ML) and the Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC).

Evidence of this dispute can be found in the Legislative Assembly, where out of the 57 deputies, 19 remain in power from the Social Democrats, 17 from the PLN, 14 from the PAC, and 6 from the ML. It seems that in the next government, according to the polls, the division of power will remain much the same, but with an ample majority of the PLN, followed by ML, PAC, and finally the PUSC. One only hopes that the next parliament won't be as ineffective as the one which will soon be leaving.

In the last year, the PUSC has appeared affected by the accusations of corruption pointed at two major leaders, Rafael Angel Calderón and Miguel Angel Rodriguez, which have come to affect the general credibility of Costa Rican politicians as well as helped other parties strengthen

Such acts have provoked ex-president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Oscar Arias Sanchez, to aspire to reelection. Given his large following he is virtually guaranteed victory in the upcoming 2006 elections. But such facts don't minimize the large support for the two new political parties: ML, headed by Otto Guevara and PAC headed by Otón Solís. Nor will it stop the parties from grabbing a good quantity of the legislative posts.

Various blogs in Costa Rica have come out expressing their opinions, some impartial and others not as much, like in the case of The News Star, where posts like Oscar Arias en la UCR affirm a consistent support for Arias. Others, like betobet.com by Alberto “Beto” González allow one to understand their support of the Libertarian Movement of Otto Guevara and give a point of view in various themes of national interest like the free trade agreement with the United States in posts like “Exodo,” which says in part:

Quickly, Costa Rica is transforming from what was, for many years, an exception to the rules in the most economically unequal region of the world to become “just one more of the mountain.”

It is something worrisome which we as “Ticos,” or Costa Ricans, have to think about seriously. Other blogs like La Suiza Centroamericana show disagreement with the politics of Otón Solis of the PAC in posts like Cada Día Se Hunde Más (Sinking More Every Day).

To conclude, it's still to premature to say if Costa Rican politics are changing for the good or bad. We have to wait a few years to see the results of what we are planting today, but all Costa Ricans hope that the harvest will bring juicy fruits.

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Images from Ile-Ife, Nigeria - A Spiritual People!

Edward Popoola · 13:34

A spiritual People

A Spiritual People by Jangbalajugbu-Homeland Stories
Nigerians were rated as the happiest people on earth some time ago - the reason is simple. Nigerians are a spiritual people!

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Iranian Clerics & Blogging: Ayatollah Goes Virtual

Farid Pouya · 12:15

lingua → zhs · zht

More Iranian clerics are blogging and share their ideas, beliefs and daily life on internet. It is amazing that clerics who control literally everything in country need blogs to express their ideas.
In Islamic Iran there are several religious (clerics) bloggers who criticize Iranian state with soft words and try to discuss people’s concerns beyond official propaganda.

One of these bloggers is PejvakeKhamoush (silent echo)(link in Farsi) an Iranian cleric from Khuzestan who is living in Qom. In his blog we see Ganji’s (jailed journalist) photo and he asks for his freedom…He talks about his daily experience in front of an Iranian store. He explains how it has become difficult for many to buy their daily meat and other basic food. He says

“When there is no bread no meat what to do with nuclear technology”

He bravely publishes news and articles from other Iranian sites including opposition ones in exile.

Another one is Hajji(link in Farsi). He says that superstition and religious get really mixed up in Iran. According to this cleric many people come to high ranked Ayatollahs’ offices to be anointed or get a miracle. Usually they give an object (cloth for example) to Ayatollah’s servants and Ayatollah touched them and returned them back to people.

Another blogger is Hojreh(link in Farsi): He says Iranian Mullahs sometimes takeoff their traditional cloth because they know people dislike them. They prefer to be not known as clerics!

There are traditional clerics too. One of them is ye donya pedar gom kardam(link in Farsi). His blog is full of stories about miracles, saints, prayers…

Webnevesht is country's former Vice President's blog. This reformist blogger,Mr.Abtahi, publishes photos that he takes, his political ideas and his daily life. Recently he talked about private TV stations:

For sure if the writers of the Constitution were in the current situation of the world, they wouldn't consent to the exclusivity of radio and TV!

But there still exists the possibility of starting private channels but to understand that the cold war is over and the communication revolution has removed the borders is difficult for many!

It is interesting that Iranian people from different walks of life are involved with blogging. If clerics, who rule over Iran, need blogs to express themselves then we can understand importance of blogs for the rest of population!

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Effect Measure on Facing the Global Bird Flu Threat

Jose Manuel Tesoro · 00:03

With recent reports of avian flu in Western Europe, the disease is clearly no longer East Asia's problem. It's a dilemma for the world. Last week I emailed Revere, the pseudonymous leader of Effect Measure, a public health group blog. Since its inception in late 2004, Effect Measure has been covering the global response to avian flu. My goal was to discuss the pandemic fears and what the world — and ordinary people — can do to prepare for it.

Revere, an environmental epidemiologist in a senior faculty position at a major research university, has 40 years of experience in medicine and public health. He is also one of the individuals behind the Flu Wiki, an Internet-based experiment in community mobilization and knowledge-pooling to face the feared epidemic. He paints an alarming picture. “If a pandemic is going to happen (and we don't know how to predict if it will or not with certainty), it will happen whatever we do,” he writes. “There will be no “outside” for help to come from, so each community needs to prepare to cope on its own.” In previous flu pandemics, hundreds of thousands of people went sick or died, leading to massive disruptions as workers failed to show up to work and instead surged into ill-equipped and ill-prepared hospitals.

Revere sees two big tasks ahead: managing the consequences of a potential pandemic, and building (or rebuilding) the world's rotting public health infrastructure.

GV: Why did you start blogging?

Revere: The blog originated as a forum to discuss the failed leadership in public health in the U.S. (also elsewhere). We have posted almost 700 items on a wide variety of public health topics. The most frequent, however, has been bird flu, which we began to talk about almost a year ago because it seemed the perfect metaphor for failed leadership in public health. At that time it was difficult to convince people of two points: that avian influenza was a serious potential threat; and that we weren't prepared to meet it. Hurricane Katrina solved the second problem and along with the inexorable spread of bird flu in poultry and wild birds contributed to solving the first. Bird flu is now on the public agenda worldwide.

GV: How well are current measures, like the destruction of infected flocks, working to contain the disease?

Revere: The idea that mass killing of infected birds could stop this disease from spreading had some intuitive appeal as long as it was localized. This tactic seemed to have success in Hong Kong in 1997. However the disease game back with a vengence in Southeast Asia in 2003 and has since become a panzootic (pandemic among animals, in this case birds) throughout Asia. It is too late to stop it in this way. The genie is out of the bottle. Mass culling will buy a short amount of time, perhaps, but isn't likely to be effective at this point.

GV: But do vaccines exist that will protect us?

Revere: One or more experimental vaccines do exist. There is no proven vaccine and none that is in production or whose production, even if begun immediately, would supply more than a fraction of the global need. Most places also have no effective public health infrastructure to deliver a vaccine, even if it existed. The known results for the [National Institutes of Health] vaccine trials suggest that we do not have a practical recipe yet, as the data suggested that the dose required was far in excess of production capacity. Many countries are working on producing a practical vaccine for humans at the moment (Hungary is the latest to claim success), but it isn't realistic to suppose we will have a vaccine solution for some years. We also don't know what genetic version of the virus will wind up being the pandemic strain, so it isn't possible at the moment to make a specific and effective preparation until that information is known, i.e., until after a pandemic starts. With current methods, a vaccine would take six to eight months to be produced. Many groups are working on techniques to speed this up (e.g., cell culture or DNA-based vaccines).

GV: Can the global public health infrastructure cope with this threat? Will developing countries bear the brunt of the possible pandemic?

Revere: Ad hoc workarounds will be the hallmark of both developed and developing countries. Many developed countries have seriously neglected or weakened their public health infrastructures (the U.S. is a prime example), and the main tasks of consequence management will fall to local communities anyway. Some developing countries may be better off in this regard as they will not have so many critical infrastructure interdependencies and will have social structures that better allow “neighbor helping neighbor,” which is what this will come down to. But the developing world will still bear the brunt, mainly because it has less material resources and poorer baseline health.

GV: What can individuals do to prepare?

Revere: We believe that the key need at the moment is for individuals to get together to anticipate and plan for a situation where there might be extensive absenteeism (say 30%). Once you begin to think the consequences of this through, you also begin to realize that there is much that can be done in advance to ameliorate the impact. The Flu Wiki is devoted to this kind of planning. Just to take one small example, many retail businesses like pharmacies (and food stores) operate on a “just in time” inventory system. If the supply chain is interrupted for a week or ten days, serious shortages result. Thus diabetics or heart disease patients might find that they can no longer find insulin or blood pressure medication at their local drug store. A state or community could make a very short list in advance of such medicines and plan for an alternate source and supply chain, perhaps using the National Guard or militia for transportation and logistics to a distributed series of wholesale supply points. Volunteers could be enlisted to distribute them. There are many examples like this. It doesn't take a lot of resources or outside help, but it does require some foresight. Now is the time to get ready.

GV Note: Avian Flu and The Coming Influenza Pandemic? are other blogs tracking avian flu news.

Photo: ‘Vanishing' by 3 steps ahead (Bartholomew Plucinski).

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